Duke Block

Duke Block was an explorer of the United Provinces.

Biography
Duke Block was born in Nijmegen, Holland, and he became an explorer. Block founded New Tilburg on Borneo in 1655 during the Dutch-Portuguese War, and he developed the settlement into a mixture of residential areas, farmland, and some banks. The town of New Tilburg would ally with local Jesuits and Sufis against Portugal, and the Dutch attacked the Portuguese colony of Nova Ciborro with their large army. The destruction of the Portuguese colony gave the Dutch control of a portion of Borneo, giving them the advantage over the Portuguese in the colonization of the East Indies.